1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a bottom-freezer refrigerator having an ice making compartment formed in a door, and more particularly to a refrigerator capable of minimizing power consumption and noise, being maintained in a clean state, maintaining a refrigerating compartment in a high-moisture state, and preventing an opposite door from being forcibly open when one door is open.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, a refrigerator is a device aiming at storing foods at a low temperature. In addition, the refrigerator is an electronic appliance to freeze or refrigerate foods to be stored according to the states of the foods. Recently, refrigerators have been developed in various forms in order to improve the standard of living and satisfy various preferences of a consumer.
In other words, there is introduced a bottom-freezer refrigerator in which an internal space having a polygonal shape is formed in a body, a partition is installed to divide the internal space into upper and lower spaces, a refrigerating compartment is formed in the upper space, a freezing compartment is formed in a lower space, and a plurality of doors are rotatably coupled to the front surface of the refrigerator, so that a user can easily draw foods out of the refrigerating compartment without bending the waist of the user for the use of the foods.
According to embodiments, there is introduced a refrigerator having ice making facilities installed in the door of the refrigerating compartment.
However, according to the refrigerator, an evaporator of the freezing compartment in the lower space generates cold air through a heat-exchange scheme, the cold air is moved to an inner part of an ice making compartment through a fluid passage. In this case, the cold air of the ice making compartment is moved into the refrigerating compartment to store articles in the refrigerating compartment at a low temperature. Then, the cold air of the refrigerating compartment is moved into the freezing compartment to form a circulation structure of the ice making compartment, the refrigerating compartment, and the freezing compartment.
Therefore, as the conventional bottom-freezer refrigerator has a long fluid passage to link the freezing compartment, the ice making compartment, and the refrigerating compartment with each other, it is difficult to adjust the cooling speed.
In particular, as the length of the fluid passage, through which the cold air is moved, is increased, power consumption is increased due to the operation of a motor and heat loss to keep cold air, and noise is increased.
In addition, according to the conventional refrigerator, the refrigerating compartment positioned in the upper space must have sufficient moisture to maintain foods in a fresh state. To the contrary, the freezing compartment must be maintained in a dry state because, if the freezing compartment has a large amount of moisture, frost may be made.
However, according to the conventional refrigerator, the moisture of the refrigerating compartment is moved into the freezing compartment, so that the frost is made inside the freezing compartment. On the contrary, the dried freezing compartment circulates the cold air to insufficiently reduce the moisture of the refrigerating compartment, so that the freshness of the foods is degraded.
Furthermore, according to the bottom-freezer refrigerator, the cold air circulates between the refrigerating and freezing compartments having mutually different doors.
If the door of the refrigerating compartment is strongly closed, the air is introduced into the refrigerating compartment. In this case, the introduced air is moved into the freezing compartment through the refrigerating compartment, so that the freezing compartment is fully filled with the introduced air to forcibly open the door of the freezing compartment.
In addition, the cold air is moved into the space between the refrigerating compartment, the ice making compartment, and the freezing compartment, so that the smell of foods received in the refrigerating compartment or the freezing compartment may be spread throughout the whole refrigerator.
As cited references of related arts, there are KR10-2005-0127516 A1 (cited reference 1) and KR10-2005-0008905 A1 (cited reference 2).